A Guy With A Good Job

The white van that stopped at the small business simply said "Nielsen" on the side.  The driver bought four large salads (all different), a grilled chicken wrap and a kiwi drink, all to go.  While my daughter did the real work I asked the customer what he did.

"Nielsen does cellular network testing for the three major carrier networks.  I service seven major markets."

"What exactly do you do?

"I drive fixed routes in each market sending and receiving data and then I upload it at night.  It's been a good job for nine years."

"So just drive around?  What is your background?"

"Yes, I just drive around and let the equipment do what it needs to do.  I have a Masters in electrical engineering.  Previously I was a contractor doing exactly the same thing.  Now that I'm 67 I like the benefits."

Who would have thought there were jobs like that?  He's sixty-seven.  At sixty-four I think I might still warrant the compensation of a c-level guy but then I'd be doing budgets, managing people that don't want to be managed or annoying those that don't need managing, working on strategy, cost-effective process and system improvements, politics, etc.  Theoretically let's say the c-level job pays six-figures responsible for all those previously mentioned tasks versus a job that pays '.5 x six-figures" and involves getting in a nice van and driving around.

As much as I like driving I don't like sitting for extended periods of time and I do enjoy impossible tasks for commensurate pay.

Training Day
Today my daughter trained me on some of the things she does at the small business.  I've avoided being good at some of those because of the obvious.  The real upside to the experience was finding out she is a very good trainer, something I did not know.

Mobility & Embarrassement

My better half was out of town and I had to fill in on another small business activity at another location at five PM.  Being unusually early gave me the opportunity to use my phone as a hotspot, sit in the car and start a blog post (this one).  Any good mobile user has to futz with their headset or earbuds, find the right tunes,
check their email account(s), monitor Twitter and look at Facebook before doing any real work.

Sitting in a car doing all this with a notebook propped on the steering wheel and your gut is weird and it always makes me feel like a creeper.  It was an opportunity for a good quick Facebook read or short non-dancing cat post but I was distracted by the advertisement "Manilow."  Being greatly embarrassed I have to admit that I've actually seen Barry Manilow three times in concert.  One of those concerts was a fundraiser for children with no homes or some incurable disease or their parents were ultra liberal or ultra conservative.  Certainly that makes my three concerts somewhat less pathetic.  After the third one even my wife said "enough."

I Cannot Work At Bruegger's or Caribou 
At three-ten PM the Bruegger's/Caribou doors open and fifty middle-school kids flood in.  They are very noisy.  Apparently while I'm on the budget plan for artisan coffee the thirteen/fourteen crowd has money for that and it does not make them quieter.  They're not totally obnoxious but the staff looks pained.  The young boys look like they are ten and the young girls look like they are fifteen and they all have similar voices.  Combined with the really poor wireless internet bandwidth I gravitate to sleezy locations where no twenty-something or thirty-something or even older mobile workers would be seen.  Burger King has good internet and the few patrons simply sit and stare or read the paper leaving me the bandwidth.  I always buy a beverage just to "pay my way," but Burger King is so awful that I usually throw the contents away.

"Little Miss Sunshine" was written by a Twin Cities woman who sat at a coffee shop for a year or two.  I'm not sure if it was the coffee, the duration or the location that caused her to create such a sad but happy and thoughtful film.  OK this is wrong.  My movie viewing has been off for at least a decade.  "Little Miss Sunshiine" was a very good film and I would recommend it to almost anyone.  It's not a movie for kids.  The filmwriter/movie writing scenario was Juno, a film about a young girl unexpectedly pregnant.  I've seen the film but not read the screenplay.  As much as I promote remote/mobile working I'm not sure that much really gets done but I'm not sure much gets done in the formerly white collar office environment either.

Why This Post About Not Having a Dumb Job is Lacking Today.
Whipping Post by The Allman Brothers  is simply too overwhelming today.  Lacking, overwhelming, blah, blah, blah.